Hot melt thermoplastic adhesives are widely used in the packaging, automotive, furniture, and shoe industries. A wide variety of adhesive formulations has previously been suggested to provide the required balance of adhesive and cohesive strengths, workability, and resistence to moisture, solvents, and temperature extremes.
Hammer, in U.S. Pat. No. Re. 30,754, discloses graft copolymers based on ethylene polymers with grafted lactam moieties. While these compositions exhibit a variety of desirable properties, they generally do not have melt flow characteristics which permit their effective use as hot melt adhesives.